DEADLINE: AUGUST 7, 2015

ATLANTIS Mission Statement:Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice/Études critiques sur le genre, la culture, et la justice sociale, formerly Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal / Revue d'etudes sur les femmes is a scholarly research journal devoted to critical work in a variety of formats that reflects current scholarship and approaches to the discipline of Women's and Gender Studies. It incorporates a diversity of feminist, anti-racist and critical identity, intersectional, transnational, and cultural studies approaches to a wide range of contemporary issues, topics, and knowledges. Atlantis is dedicated to the ongoing growth of knowledge in the field of Women's and Gender Studies, as well as to critical reflections on the field itself.

Atlantis is published twice a year and only considers previously unpublished materials (i.e. not currently in the public domain, either in print or electronic form). It accepts submissions in both English and French. Submission should not exceed 7,000 words (including references). Authors should use Chicago author-date style for all citations and references (see http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

All submissions should be made through the Atlantis website at: msvu.ca/atlantisQuestions can be emailed to Atlantis.Journal@msvu.ca

** When submitting your manuscript to the Atlantis on-line system, please note the following: If you have not already registered, please do so by clicking “Register” (http://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/user/register). Be sure to select the “Author” checkbox in the “Register as” section at the bottom of the registration form to ensure that you are able to make your submission using the system.

Clusters

This Call for Papers asks for submissions for one thematic cluster and one open topic cluster.

Canadian universities are undergoing a significant shift in institutional priorities in the early 21st century, and one of those shifts involves a new emphasis on providing students with opportunities for community-based learning. Where community-based learning has been implemented by WGS faculty and programs, WGS typically invokes activist-oriented, social justice frameworks seeking to distinguish feminist community involvement from “service” or “volunteering”-- by prioritizing critiques of power, privilege, and identity so central to the intellectual work of the field. We are interested in papers that explore whether/how such distinctions between WGS approaches to community-based praxis and more typical service- or community-based learning approaches hold up under scrutiny. Are WGS approaches really so different? What tensions arise from the quite different agendas of postsecondary institutions (e.g. producing workplace ready students, making university education about the acquisition of instrumental knowledge/marketable skills, and building positive community relations) and WGS’s social justice orientation; do WGS programs subvert or adjust to this orientation towards community engagement currently being advanced by our universities and colleges? We invite previously unpublished essays that contemplate, analyze and otherwise reflect upon community-based praxis learning in WGS programs in Canada. Rather than solicit a series of descriptive experiences of practicum placements, we invite rigorous interpretations, theorizations, and historicizations of how WGS programs of all sizes and in all regions of Canada imagine the relationship of WGS to its communities through student placements, practica, internships, activist projects, and other praxis undertaken for credit. Further, we are interested in how community-based learning in WGS attends to the political and theoretical commitments of the field: to indigeneity, anti-racism, decolonization, queering, the affective, the transnational, anti-poverty, dis/ability, and others. Single and co-authored papers as well as collaborative works involving WGS scholars and past or current community partners or students are invited. The editors are simultaneously compiling a book manuscript on community-based praxis in WGS. Please address queries about this cluster or the book manuscript to Amber Dean (deanamb@mcmaster.ca), Jennifer L. Johnson (jljohnson@laurentian.ca), and Susanne Luhmann (luhmann@ualberta.ca).

Questions that papers might address could include:·What role does community-based praxis learning play in the self-understanding of WGS as a form of resistant knowledge? ·Is it possible to teach praxis? What pedagogical questions are central to the WGS praxis component?·(How) does WGS praxis engage with decolonization and anti-racism?·What constitutes “work experience” for WGS students in the liberal arts university, the community college, the CEGEP, or the hybrid professional stream/WGS program?·What is the future “work” of the WGS graduate and how does experience with praxis contribute to that? ·How is WGS praxis culturally/politically specific to a Euro/western context?·What happens when praxis projects go international? How is WGS praxis conceptualized in the Global South and other places?·In what ways is global neoliberalism shaping the goals of university/college education and how does WGS praxis fit into this context? ·What do contemporary movements and activist organizations get out of WGS praxis placements? Of what benefit is the praxis component to a WGS program? Of what benefit is it to the student?·How do women’s organizations, including rape crisis, shelters, women’s centres, etc., perceive praxis in WGS?·How useful is university/college/CEGEP-based WGS praxis to “the community” and how can this be evaluated?·(How) can more critical approaches to praxis cultivated in WGS resist co-optation, yet possibly harness the potential of the widespread institutional prioritization of community-based learning occurring now at Canadian universities?

Cluster #2: Open TopicEditors: Ann Braithwaite and Annalee Lepp

Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice/Études critiques sur le genre, la culture, et la justice sociale also welcomes submissions on topics and themes other than those identified in the above thematic clusters that fit with the journal’s mission statement (see http://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/index).Issue Publication Date: Winter 2015-2016Download a Microsoft Word version of this call for papers here